images in the age of mourning

When my grandfather passed away a few months ago, they (honestly I don’t know who—the general consensus?) picked out a single portrait of him from when he was around 50 to serve as the official photo for the funereal ceremonies. Unlike some Western ceremonies, traditional Korean funerals do not have wakes, whether the body is buried or cremated. Only close family members have the opportunity to see the physical body for a brief moment shortly after the death, before the coffin is closed or the body is wrapped up to be transported to a firing house. Instead, for the remaining period of three (for national political figures, five) days of ceremonies, a photograph stands as the person who has passed.

This particular photo of my grandfather was placed inside a room within the funeral home, before which the living burned incense and lay white chrysanthemums to pay their respects to him, bidding him a safe trip to the other world. Copies of this same photo was also placed in other unofficial mourning locations throughout Korea for those who weren’t able to travel to the official location where his body was being held. Some people journeyed hours just so they could stand before this picture, preferably at the official location in Seoul. They bowed, they spoke to, and wept for my grandfather, their gaze always directed at this one photograph of my grandfather, arrested in time several decades prior to his death.

Over those few days, it seemed the photo, an image that was intended to represent him, became my grandfather to the people who visited. On the fifth day when we finally buried him, we carried that framed photo back home, carefully wrapped in a soft, silky fabric. I was holding the large portrait on my lap inside the car, and a close friend of the family, asked if she could carry the portrait herself. Without hesitating, I passed her the photo, and upon settling the frame on her lap she said, “It is such an honor to have the privilege of escorting the prime minister back to his home.”

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Many have written extensively on the role that photographs play in the moment of a personal or national tragedy. In “The Highest Degree of Illusion,” David Levi Strauss writes that one such function of the photograph is to mitigate pain, that is, provide a more tolerable alternative to a painful reality. For weeks after the World Trade Center disintegrated into ashes on September 11^th, 2001, people—both those who were physically present to witness the crashes and those who were not—relived the event through viewing an endless repetition of its images in the media:

It’s not that we mistake photographs for reality; we prefer them to reality. We cannot bear reality, but we bear images—like stigmata, like children, like fallen comrades. We suffer them. We idealize them. We believe them because we need what we are in them (Strauss 185).

But we no longer simply rely on images during the occasional difficult times; we rely on them all through our lives. Or rather—let me correct myself—it seems as though difficult times have grown so frequent and continuous that it has become ever more challenging to consider whether we can now live without images at all. With the expansion of technological achievements over the last few decades, images and colors are everywhere. They need not be reserved for special occasions or situations; they are accessible by most people, and not just the privileged few. Vilém Flusser, in Towards a Philosophy of Photography, 1983, articulates the phenomenon as a kind of thorough infiltration of images (photographs, specifically) into our world:

In the nineteenth century the world was grey: walls, newspapers, books, shirts, tools, all these varied between black and white merging together into grey—as in the case of printed texts. Now everything cries out in all imaginable colours, but it cries out to deaf ears. We have become accustomed to visual pollution; it passes through our eyes and our consciousnesses without being noticed (Flusser 66).

If this was the case in 1983, at the time Flusser’s work was published, it is even more so now. Now, in 2012, we need images; we can no longer process, recognize, accept “reality” without the mediation of images, as Strauss has written, that provide us “just enough unreality and distance to ‘make it real’” (Strauss 184). We have become addicted to images.

Before all of this began to take place, back in 1936, Walter Benjamin, in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” had warned his readers about the power of photographs and film to alter human perception of art and the physical world. Though he laments the loss of the aura—the historicity of an image/object—he recognizes images as a potential agent for political change, that is, mobilizing the masses to establish a better system in their desolate worlds. Nearly fifty years later, Flusser continues the legacy of Benjamin’s inquiry on precisely how this power has played out: a domination of human beings over other human beings has become that of cameras over human beings.

According to Flusser, the real threat of this recent phenomenon is that, like a schizophrenic who doesn’t realize she is schizophrenic, people do not realize the degree to which they are victims to this domination. Most still believe they still hold free agency to exercise control over their perceptions of the world, when in actuality, we (especially those who grew up during the digital age) have been unconsciously programmed throughout our lives to think in the manner and fulfill the goals of what Flusser calls the photographic universe. He argues that because the process of this brainwashing operates on a subliminal level, we respond and act automatically without thought according to its program: “It programs the observer to act magically and functionally, and thus automatically, i.e. without obeying human intention in the process” (Flusser 74). Further, since this world of images operates by chance, human agency becomes completely obliterated; what is at stake in our subordination is the inability for us to reclaim our freedom, as long as we remain ignorant.

Are we that vulnerable or is the photographic program that powerful that is has taken over all of our lives? In 1980, when Roland Barthes published Camera Lucida after his mother’s death, he recalls going through a pile of photographs of his mother to find the “right” one, in which he could truly recognize her in her entirety as he remembered her. “I never recognized her except in fragments,” he writes, “straining toward the essence of her identity, I was struggling among images partially true, and therefore totally false [emphasis added]” (Barthes 65, 66). He describes that his “grief wanted a just image, an image which would be both justice and accuracy [emphasis added]” that is “beyond simple resemblance” (Barthes 60, 107). When he finally finds the image that wholly embodies her “air,” “the kindness which had formed her being immediately and forever,” it is in a photograph of his mother when she was five years old (Barthes 69). Though her body is gone, Barthes now has possession of an image that holds her entire being, to which he can refer over and over again to relive the experience of being with the one he loved but who is no longer present in the world.

Are we now in a perpetual state of mourning? In this age, when there is an overflow of images, one can simply turn to its infinite reservoir to try to find that one true photograph, one that will feed our dreams, alleviate our pains, or as Barthes says, one in which we can “confront in it the wakening of intractable reality” (Barthes 119). But why choose the discomfort of the last option when we can drown ourselves in dreams and illusions? Flusser speaks of the camera’s program as a kind of suffocating dictatorship that drains the souls of human beings while they unknowingly suffer as passive victims. But we want the photographic intoxication; we want to find that one miracle that will save us from the tragedies of everyday life. So everyday we go on our computers and sift through the eternal flow of images on the internet and our hard drives; we gratify our emptiness with the bits and fragments of the miracle that some offer, endlessly searching, hoping to one day find that true one, the only one that will suffice.

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Even after weeks of mourning with other family members, there was something missing. The official funereal photograph was supposed to serve as the way in which people could see my grandfather one last time before he left this world, and even after his burial, this photo was placed in a room at my grandmother’s home so that visitors could greet or speak to him. But I never recognized that person in the photograph as my grandfather. The person in the photograph was grandfather, the politician, not grandfather, my loving grandfather, who always made witty jokes, shared wines and Campari Oranges with me, and asked me when I was getting married. I wanted to see him one last time; during all those weeks in Korea, I felt like I was speaking to the wrong person.

I left Korea before my mother to return to New York while she stayed behind for a few more weeks to spend more time with my grandmother. When I called my mother to tell her I arrived safely, she asked me to search through her albums to find all of my grandfather’s photographs to upload onto a family server. My mother had four rows of bookshelves devoted to photo albums, most of which had pictures of my grandfather. I spent weeks going through them, carefully peeling back the plastic protective sheet, removing the photograph, scanning, replacing, then repeating the process. I would sometimes pause to look at one longer than the others, but only when, like Barthes has written, it possessed a fragment of my grandfather’s being. Two or three times when they looked very close to his “air,” I scanned a photo and emailed it to myself, but I have still not found that one just photograph. I console myself by saying that I don’t need a visual object to remember or speak to my grandfather. But whether the image be the truth or merely serve to feed an illusion, I need to see my grandfather one last time. And so I search until I find it, or until time makes me forget.

Works cited:

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Print.

Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1983, Print.

David Levi Strauss. “The Highest Degree of Illusion.” Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics. New York: Aperture, 2003. Print.

monotone monochrome

Review of Surface, Support, Process: The 1960s Monochrome in the Guggenheim Collection

As The Guggenheim closes its central spiral space in preparation for a show of works by another art world super star, John Chamberlain (opening on February 24th), the museum has decided to use some of its peripheral galleries as throw-back spaces for the genesis of modern and contemporary art. Along with its ongoing exhibition of the Thannhauser Collection—home to the classic modernists like Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Picasso—the museum offers “intimate presentations” of later works such as Kandinsky at the Bauhaus and 1960s art as consolation bribes to its disappointed visitors. We are deprived of the spiral-meandering experience, but with the discounted ticket prices—student tickets, normally $15, are reduced to $8—the mini exhibits aren’t bad; without being overly ambitious, they provide spaces for us to pause and reflect upon what art has come to mean for us today.

Surface, Support, Process: The 1960s Monochrome in the Guggenheim Collection is one such exhibit that occupies a side gallery on the second floor. It consists of ten works in total from the same time period by artists that utilized the advantages of a limited range of tones in order to explore the nature of their mediums, and by extension, art as a whole. The 60s marks an important moment in American history; during this time of social upheaval, the dissatisfied and ever increasingly disillusioned masses, having mobilized beginning in the 50s for change to a better world, finally started to gain momentum. The U.S. dropped its first bombs on Vietnam in the midst of anti-war protests, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in the same year (himself to be assassinated four years later), and feminists were making increased efforts to raise awareness about gender inequality. The 60s became the time when realities—hitherto accepted as the fundamental bases of American life—were actively interrogated by those within the cultural fabric. It is no surprise that the 60s gave rise to an explosion of literary and artistic scholarship that challenged the origins of what had been called definitions and unquestionable nature. It is from within this context that the artists of the Guggenheim’s 60s monochrome show created their works.

While the Pop art on the floor above presents one direction that American artists took to the questioning the role of art in a changing world—looking outward to mass culture as the reservoir of subjects—the monochrome exhibit presents another: an intensely inward look at art and its basic materials. Ever since the invention of photography, modern art took its turn by emphasizing the materiality of paint and the sculptural medium; these artists from the 60s push the emphasis further by eliminating numerous elements that effect the experience of viewing, including a diverse palette. Not all of the works presented are in monotone—Robert Ryman, for example, blends blue chalk with white paint in Surface Veil II, c. 1970 and III, 1971—but in fact, even the ones that are (ostensibly) evenly coated with a single tone—like John McCracken’s Blue Plank, 1969, or Robert Mangold’s 1/3 Gray-Green Curved Area, 1977—make one do a double take; uniformity in color perception does not exist in actuality. The curators, Megan Fontanella and Lauren Hinkson have indicated that all of these artists possessed varying interests in their use of monochrome, but by way of limiting their palettes, the artists demonstrate one common effect: bringing attention to surface and material. Josef Albers has written, “color deceives continually,” sometimes caused by its juxtaposition with another, sometimes caused by the play of light upon the medium bearing the color (Albers 1). The use of monochrome eliminates the first instance of color deception and thereby enhances the physicality of the object.

The small but careful selection of examples effectively eases the visitor into this particular mode of viewing, which can prove a difficult task in our now color-bombarded world. (Vilém Flusser: “Now everything cries out in all imaginable colours, but it cries out to deaf ears. We have become accustomed to visual pollution; it passes through our eyes and our consciousness without being noticed” (Flusser 66)). We are used to quick and easily digestible flashes of information thrown at us; we are not used to standing still to search a canvas that does not offer us the exhaustive range of possibilities in color that we now have the technology to create. Here, we must pause and look—we have made the trip, after all, in expectation that we will be offered something—but with more patience. Some works act as the beginner’s introduction to viewing monochrome; Mary Corse’s Light Painting, 1971, for example, is a clear display of the artist’s interest in light and the surface materiality of a canvas. Her mixture of glass microspheres in acrylic paint creates a shimmer across the surface that shifts with the position of the light and the viewer. Even while one stands still, the small sparkling grains of glass seem to sweep by before one’s eyes, like witnessing a rare passing sandstorm in some distant desert. Corse interrupts the illusion of the mystical trance, though, with the solid white squares at each corner of the plane as a reminder that this is an object that she has constructed out of tangible materials in our world. Agnes Martin’s White Stone, 1965, provides a similar training for our eyes: the faintly gridded canvas houses a number of even more faintly perceptible flower motifs that appear and disappear with our position.

After having experienced these two works, one acquires a more acute appreciation for light as a significantly determining factor in viewing other works in the gallery. The feathery strokes upon the surfaces of Ryman’s whitescapes seem to begin to flutter with much more energy with this newly altered perception; our eyes notice that the shadows made on the walls and reflection of light on the gloss coating McCracken’s Blue Plank, 1969, and Ellsworth Kelly’s White Angle, 1966, appear more pronounced. All of these artists choose to emphasize different aspects of their various materials, but the exhibit successfully identifies one unifying characteristic that relates to the American socio-political climate at the time: interest in the basic materials for any type of construction—high or low, social or artistic.

Works cited:

Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Print.

Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Book Ltd, 2007. Print.

american hello kitty

Review of Joyce Pensato's "Batman Returns" @ Friedrich Petzel Gallery 537 W. 22nd St.

Out of all the mainstream American superheroes, Batman has enjoyed a particular kind of attention as the alluring bad boy of few words: one that fights evil, but whose motivation stems from a place as dark as that of his own villains. He cleans up societal waste, but is not exactly the friendliest; his mask performs a double duty of hiding and projecting. Christened after this pop icon—whose most significant battle between of good and evil occurs within his innermost self—Batman Returns, Joyce Pensato’s solo exhibition at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, presents an artists’s cave filled with popular (mostly children’s) characters and demands that we now question the surface of those images. Born in Brooklyn and practicing art in her East Williamsburg studio since the late 1970’s, the artist focuses her latest work on a seemingly obsessive preoccupation with quintessential images of the American childhood, most notably, Mickey Mouse and his Disney friends, the Simpsons, Sesame Street characters, and the occasional South Park boys and Felix the Cat.

Let’s return for a moment to the overused cave reference: the paint-splattered heaps of toys, thickly coated paint buckets and brushes, and the dizzying collage of images on the walls rest on the pristine interiors of a surprisingly clean gallery space, opposite traditionally hung large canvases of dripping faces. The initial impression of the lived-in bat cave is a deception; artifacts from the den has been cut-out then re-installed for display in a space designated for such purposes. Like a historical museum recreating a uni-bomber’s nest to provide insight into her disturbed psychology, the exhibit presents a carefully preserved and displaced private space that now stands naked before the public eye. The lurking evil beneath smiling Mickeys and abandoned Elmos with blackened eyes come into full force with their publicized private aspect; it is difficult to avoid the rapidly approaching childhood fear of the party clown.

Why is the clown such a source of fear for so many Americans? Pensato suggests that we might benefit from holding a similar suspicion for what lies behind the rarely questioned masks of cartoon characters, which pop culture feeds our children. The tension between the projected image—deliberately constructed to rouse a very specifically intended effect—and what that projection thereby seeks to obscure in turn, rings especially poignantly with the dreaded school portraits sprinkled throughout the installation in similar or identical pairs. The anonymous cameraman tells every child to give her very best smile; the image that results is intended to serve as a reference of her happy school years, frozen in time. With the flash, she is wearing the best mask to remember herself by; years later, that mask best reveals what lay beneath that forced expression.

please be advised

Review of Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" at the Brooklyn Museum

 Let’s first lay down some highlights of the artist’s achievements for the feminist cause: Judy Chicago (American, born 1939) was one of the pioneers of the feminist art movement in the 70’s, a major figure that directly challenged the marginalization of women in the art world. Not only did she pave the way for forging a new female creative language through her own visual works, according to Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, Chicago, along with Miriam Schapiro, was one of “the first people to theorize and develop a form of education in the visual arts based on feminism,” through the Feminist Art Program at CalArts and Womanhouse (66). In an interview with Broude and Garrard, Chicago claims that her idea of feminist extends beyond gender, as “a set of principles, and a way of looking at the world that... is rooted in a redefinition of power—from power over others to empowerment,” an effort to escape from the oppression enforced by “the patriarchal paradigm” (72, 73). In terms of her art, this means discovering “a new language, which finally showed [her] the social circumstances of [her] female condition;” in terms of her pedagogical methods, this means “doing remedial education, and, also, providing them with information about their history as women” (74, 67).

Having acknowledged her contribution to making the art world a more friendly place for women, let us proceed to look at the actual work, The Dinner Party. The work first premiered in San Francisco, 1979, and took five years to complete. It is essentially a very elaborate ceremonial banquet for 1,038 women in history, 39 of whom are privileged with personalized place settings (though most are all just varying depictions of the same flowery vagina/”butterfly”), and 999 of whose existences are noted by their names inscribed in gold on the floor tiles. Chicago has hung six entry banners leading into the triangular banquet room that sound intentionally (but also embarrassingly) Biblical:

And she gathered all before her

And she made for them a sign to see [a triangle, that supposedly signifies equality]

And lo they saw a vision

From this day forth like to like in all things

And then all that divided them merged

And then everywhere was Eden once again

Upon exiting, the visitor encounters the “Heritage Panels,” also titled the “Herstory Gallery,” (just in case he/she didn’t get it while looking at the 1,038 names written all over the room—another cringe-worthy element of the show), which chronicles and highlights various achievements by women throughout history.

Certainly the message is clear: elevate the vagina to the status of the phallus; honor these important women, who too have contributed to history, but have been systematically written out; educate our women now so they may learn about their great female predecessors so we can finally achieve gender equality. Chicago attains this directness by the repeated use of symbols such as the triangle and what she calls an “active vaginal form,” as well as a dominant focus on crafts (weaving, embroidery, pottery, etc.) that have been historically designated as women’s work. It is wonderful that she chose to weave her entry banners by the vertical or high-warp technique, from which Renaissance women were prohibited from practicing at the time that it was popular; I’m sure that it was all a very empowering experience for the female artisans on her crew. And certainly, the craftsmanship throughout the rest of the project is very beautiful to look at.

But I see a major problem in Chicago’s work, namely that not only is the work itself dull (a large-scale high school art project involving professional artisans instead of amateurs), the artist does not execute in her work what she claims to be doing: the attempt to create a new visual language for women and the redefinition of power. This is because all elements of The Dinner Party—the banners, table settings, and historical chronology—do not depart much (if at all) from what has traditionally been the visual language of the culturally dominant group: the rich, white, Anglo, heterosexual male. Chicago has simply replaced the male guests with women, replaced the phallic symbols with vulvae. There is no doubt that she empowers these women—the banquet, prepared by countless invisible hands of the oppressed, was the ultimate display of socio-political and economic power, an indulgent activity enjoyed exclusively by the privileged few—but only through the very same method by which the women have been oppressed throughout history, a method of domination over others. I see no such attempt to establish an ambience of equality (besides the very lazy insertion of the triangle motif); Chicago’s supposed attempt to own the oppressor’s language instead manifests itself as another affirmation of the latter’s domination and the defeat of women.

Is this the only method by which a woman can articulate her social experience? By copying, pasting, and doing some hurried edits on the work of the number one student in the class? Perhaps it is the 21^st century cynic that is writing these words, and I must give more credit to the pioneer of American feminist art for attempting anything at all. However, Chicago’s method no longer flies in contemporary times, when there now exist more sophisticated investigations into gender and sexual identity; her approach appears dogmatic, authoritative, reductive, and oppressive. We can view The Dinner Party as a historical reference, but in order to achieve what Chicago has claimed as her vision, we must question the issues at hand with far more rigor than what she has executed with this particular work.

hall of fame

Review of "Hide/Seek" at the Brooklyn Museum

 Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, my high hopes for the arrival of Hide/Seek to the Brooklyn Museum—the first major museum exhibition focused on sexual identity—was met with a good deal of disappointment. I don’t deny that the Smithsonian scandal played a major role in the untethered growth of this expectation: the battle between David Wojnarowicz’s film, Fire in My Belly and old Republican Congressmen fueled the hype that I fed it without considering the overall context of the show. In the end, however, I was forced to admit my own delusion, that the media attention was simply an issue about Wojnarowicz’s work (not so much concern about the exhibit itself), and yet another public affirmation of the Republicans’ age-old political enslavement to Christian values.

The show itself, then, was an interesting, but still less an enlightening experience: the kind that you would travel forty minutes from Manhattan, but probably not an hour and a half from Long Island City to see. As both Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter for The New York Times have pointed out, Hide/Seek’s curators, Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, rely heavily on (the now) well-known, queer historical names to constitute the bulk of their presentation. Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ellen DeGeneres: these easily recognizable figures serve merely as affirmation rather than a change of an existing perspective on complexities of sexuality and sexual identity as treated throughout Western history.

Indeed, however, the gem of the show, Wojnarowicz’s video, temporarily put an end to my own dissatisfied mutterings. That piece single-handedly pushed through the mildness of the show’s other selections to come forth as the blunt and didactic side of the silenced narrative: the anger and pain behind homosexual marginalization during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s. Homosexuality is not a secondary fact to be noted in the lives of these modern artists and historical icons, who merely passed with muted acquiescence in normative guises; homosexuality (also transsexuality and gender-bending) constitutes an all-too-present reality that can sometimes takes lives. The curatorial work seems to compile a list of famous examples, as opposed to presenting a thorough investigation. Not all art or curatorial work needs to be didactic in regard to these discourses, but the issues at hand require a more serious acknowledgement of the stakes in question for the non-heterosexual male than what is made by Katz and Ward: namely, these individuals’ erasure from history. Harmony Hammond has written of lesbian artists: ”We do not have a history. We are not even visible to each other” (128). Hide/Seek does make these sexual identities visible, but treads back, having offered little or no critical commentary, which is an amazing feat considering the number of explanatory placards placed next to every single piece on the walls. After viewing the selections and overwhelming amount of text, still a pertinent question lingers ever so forcefully: “So... now what?”

The awkward cliff-hanger quality of the exhibit becomes especially pronounced through the curators’ choice of the time frame. The visitor’s entrance into the gallery space introduces her to the 1898 Salutat by Thomas Eakins, an all-male composition with a barely clothed boxer as the central figure of physical admiration that is an early example of homoeroticism, timidly expressed under the constraints of its time. She then follows the rest of the works that are arranged by chronological order—some 20^th century portraits of poets like Frank O’Hara, more cryptic canvases by David Hockney and Jasper Johns—then finally ends at the 1990’s with works that provide explicit commentary on sexual identity and the handling of the AIDS during the epidemic: Wojnarowicz’s Untitled (Face in Dirt), c. 1990, made after his own death sentence by the diagnosis of the disease, Félix González-Torres’ “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), 1991, an endlessly replenishing mound of candy piled up in response to his lover’s death, and other such works.

But just a reminder that the year is now 2012: where are the works that were made in the last two decades? Cutting off the show at a point in history when a significant percentage of the gay population perished because of a society’s unwillingness to recognize its own problems as such, Hide/Seek offers a perspective on the future of the non-heterosexual-male identity that appears morbidly bleak.

luxury toilet paper

Review of "Grisaille" at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery @ 64 E. 77th St. New York, NY 10075

 The title of Luxembourg & Dayan’s latest exhibition in New York City makes no attempt to deceive; Grisaille, a term applied to gray monochrome Renaissance paintings, consists precisely of works—spanning from the 16^th century to the present—that are almost entirely in such a palette. However, while the gallery’s press release claims the show “explores broadly the conceptual impact of a centuries-old painting paradigm upon key figures of modern and contemporary art,” its execution provides quite the contrary impression. The overall effect of its installation: an emphasis on the curatorial interests of Alison Gingeras, as opposed to a platform that provides fresh insight into individual works. Further exaggerated by the works’ contrast against the gallery’s brightly painted walls, the result is an ostentatious exercise in interior decoration that may attract attention mostly because the Ikea vases and $30 wall décor have been replaced by Frank Stellas and Jeff Koons busts. Incidentally, what I enjoyed most about the show was the untitled bathroom installation piece by Bjarne Melgaard, most likely because it was one of the few pieces that was able to break apart from Gingeras’ curatorial grips. As far as the “theme” was concerned, I saw little trace of grisaille’s influence on Melgaard’s motivation for the piece; it only seemed to belong there because the colors suited the show’s purposes. Other works were less fortunate since they were easier to render as objects, and therefore prone to being lost as one of many props in the curator’s own large-scale (but still cramped) installation.

Repulsive or comical? On one hand, the show creates major difficulties in appreciating each great work individually—some, I might say, that deserve a room of their own to give them justice—and beyond mere form and color. Especially atrocious examples this crime were the blue room on the second floor containing works portraying the female figure and the red room on the fourth floor that contained canvases with various lacy motifs. On the other hand, it is amazing to consider that the curator can so effectively strip the divine aura surrounding the works of such huge art world heavy-hitters like Andy Warhol and Robert Morris and apply a remarkably disinterested perspective of the veterans than they otherwise might receive on a Chelsea white cube pedestal for an honorary (and costly) retrospective. The yellow room on the second floor serves as a positive example of the curator’s power; the thickly sculpted eyes in Francesco Clemente’s Grilsaille Self-Portrait, 1998 stares at the viewer with different meaning when flanked by the minimalist works of Daniel Buren, Gerhard Richter, and Carl Andre. In other words, the power of Gingeras’ hand is undeniably consistent, whereas the quality of the result is not, veering uncontrollably from praise-worthy to heretic.

Upon returning to the ground floor after my tour, the annoyed receptionist reluctantly allowed me to use the gallery’s hidden bathroom. Feeling the soft, triple-ply toilet paper in my hands, I thought, At least they’re doing something good with their money.